Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Employment, corruption

Rebecca Bundhun (The National) speaks with Bahaa Mayah, the adviser to the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, and reports Iraq is still struggling to obtain antiquities spirited out of the country throughout the long war. Mayah feels that if they were able to get the treasures returned that would increase tourism which would increase jobs. Michael S. Schmidt and Omar al-Jawoshy (New York Times) also note jobs and at least 5,000 Iraqis who have held them with fraudulent qualifications. As they explain, Dr. Rahif al-Essawi, college dean, was threatened by Iraqi police who had claimed to have diplomas, when he said he wouldn't lie, they beat him up and arrested him. The ongoing war assisted in faking credentials because many records were lost or destroyed during the violence. Schmidt and al-Jawoshy note, "Education fraud has become so widespread that Parliament is considering legislation that would send people to prison for 6 to 12 years if convicted of lying about their education. They would also be forced to return all of the money they had earned while employed as a result of phony education documents. The proposal would also provide amnesty for lower-level government workers who voluntarily admitted that they had used false certificates or diplomas."

Staying on the topic of corruption, Fars News Agency reports that Parliament's Integrity Commission has declared that the are starting an investigation into corruption charges against the Speaker of Parliament Osama al-Nujaifi. The source of investigation? The article notes a home remodel which cost $600,000 and has raised eyebrows and that al-Nujaifi's trips out of Iraq are also grounds for speculation. Charges and outrage refuse to melt away regarding Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's trip to the US to speak at the United Nations. As The Great Iraqi Revolution exposed last month, Talabani's trip was costing $2 million dollars. Dar Addustour reports that Talabani noted the anger over his trip but insists that one million was just for the plane, while a half million was just for gifts to various leaders. And, apparently, half a million was just walking around money.

Today Spc Adrian Mills, the latest US soldier to die in combat in the Iraq War, is laid to rest. Roy Exum (Chattanoogan) observes, "A funeral for the kid everyone knew as “A.J.” will be held late this morning at the McKoon Funeral Home in Newnan. The burial will follow later in the day at the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton and there Mills’ body will be buried right beside his buddy, Army Pvt. Coleman Meadows, who died in Afghanistan back in 2008. There was another huge crowd at that funeral, too."

The following community sites -- plus Antiwar.com -- updated last night:

Ten years have gone by since the terrible attacks on New York City and the Pentagon yet there is no closure on what happened on “9/11” and who was behind it. An initiative led by former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, a Democrat, will be on the Massachusetts ballot next year if he gets 70,000 signatures by December. “Polls have repeatedly shown that millions of Americans seriously doubt the official story about 9/11,” Gravel said. According to a report by Byron Belitsos published in the September “Rock Creek Free Press,” of Washington, D.C., “thousands of courageous Americans have lent their names to the call for a new investigation, including over 200 senior military intelligence and other government officials; over 1,500 engineers and architects; over 250 pilots and aviation professionals; and over 400 professors.”Critics of the official spin point out that even John Farmer, the 9/11 Commission’s own senior counsel, stated that, “At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.”There are just too many unexplained happenings and coincidences, too many people on the scene---photographers, reporters, ambulance drivers, etc.---who had no reason to lie about what they saw---whose testimony shreds the official Bush regime findings.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.